Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25 (Anthony Quintile)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Serpens (Ser) · Contains: Eagle Nebula · IC 4703 · M 16 · NGC 6611 · Sh2-49 · Star Queen · Star Queen nebula

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Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25

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Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25

This is first light for my C9.25. The skies here in Flagstaff have been extremely unstable with terrible seeing conditions.

I was only able to capture 4 hours of usable data over the only two reasonable nights this month, but I will be revisiting this object when I can get FWHM and guiding numbers much lower for a better result at this resolution. Ultimately I'd like to be able to have a crisp crop of the Pillars of Creation. This image feels pretty blurred to me from the seeing conditions, although it does hold up without too much zooming in.

I did have some luck using the Astronomik 2" L3 UV-IR Block filter to help minimize the blue coma tails in the corners and some chromatic aberration inherent in using an SCT with a FR/CC. Star color was better managed, and the blue tails are far less prominent. I had taken some test images with and without, and those images definitely showed a difference.

Original
B
C
Final
D

B

Description: Some targeted color noise reduction

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: I restacked best 50 subs, (rather than 120), since the sky conditions were so terrible as an experiment to compare quantity to quality.

In this case quality trumped quantity, but the "quality" was poor even for the best. Proof of concept, but I will need to revisit M16 someday with better skies, as already planned.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Crop of the best 50 data...

Uploaded: ...

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Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4680064
PixInsight job	9IZ9006BOWAO0ASW58ZX0XWHT1AQFNZ8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	18h18m49s.460
RA (top/left)	18h19m04s.231
RA (top/right)	18h17m38s.333
RA (bottom/right)	18h18m33s.610
RA (bottom/left)	18h19m59s.999

Dec (center)	-13°45′59″.14
Dec (top/left)	-13°26′39″.98
Dec (top/right)	-13°36′16″.80
Dec (bottom/right)	-14°05′23″.65
Dec (bottom/left)	-13°55′42″.40

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Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25

Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25

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Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25

Messier 16 - First light for my C9.25

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